Chuck shook his head as he poured three glasses of wine. 'Nothing,
really. Been pretty slow.'
I could tell there were a few possibilities, though. Maybe not
full-out, pee-your-pants knee slappers, but enough to make him smile.
'Oh, c'mon,' I cajoled. 'There's no way you've been on patrol all week
without something happening. You have a civic responsibility to share
your telltale stories with bored retirees and drug deputies.'
'OK, there was this one guy. He was weaving his BMW all over the place
through a school zone, right when kids were starting to come in.
Windows tinted nearly black. When I pulled him over and he rolled down
his window, I could see he was yapping into his cell phone. Must've
been what distracted him. I was planning to give him a warning and
send him on his way, but he refused to get off the phone. Kept telling
me that he billed his time at four hundred dollars an hour and I was
keeping him from his work.'
'So you wrote him a ticket?' Dad asked.
Chuck smiled. 'Better than that. I impounded the BMW.'
'You did what?' I said.
'I towed it. Oregon Motor Vehicle Code section 815.222: illegal window
tinting, a tow able violation. Includes applying any tint that limits
light transmittance to less than fifty percent. My best guess is he
should be getting it out of the impound lot right around now,' he said,
glancing at his watch.
Dad was laughing, but I wasn't. 'I can't believe you did that. It's a
total abuse of your authority. That's why people hate cops, Chuck.'
Dad and Chuck exchanged a glance before Chuck spoke up. 'It wasn't
just an attitude problem, Sam. He nearly hit a kid and didn't even
care. I was trying to show him some perspective.'
'Sounds kind of like something you'd do, Sam,' Dad said, laughing.
Maybe, but it still bothered me that Chuck thought it was funny.
He insisted on making sure I got home OK. I had half a bottle of Pinot
Gris in my fridge, so I poured a glass for each of us to finish it
off.
He finally raised the subject we'd been avoiding. 'One of the guys
called me a couple of hours ago. Word is, IA's got something on the
Long Hauler.'
I looked at him with surprise. 'Guy seemed like a pro. First letter
had no prints, not even DNA on the stamp or envelope.'
'I assume the second letter's the same,' he said. 'I didn't mean they
figured out who he is. But the stuff in the letter, it's for real.
They found four unsolved homicide cases that match the other girls this
guy says he did.'
'But is it stuff he could've gotten from papers?' I asked.
'I don't know. He also said he left something of Jamie's in the Gorge.
IA's got a bunch of Explorers out there combing through the forest
looking for it.'
Explorers are high school students who want to become police officers.
They make for a handy resource during fishing expeditions. They don't
mind hiking around in the mud as long as they get to wear a uniform,
they're a hell of a lot cheaper than police officers on overtime, and
they aren't fat yet, so they can do helpful things like climb hills and
fit through small spaces. On the other hand, if you want an idea of
how reliable they are in their searches, the DC police used them to
search Rock Creek Park for the body of that poor missing intern a few
summers ago.
'Do you know what they're looking for?' I asked.
'No. I'm surprised I heard anything. IA's being quiet about this, and
I of all people am not supposed to hear a word. But, you know, the
guys look out for each other.'
It bothered me that he didn't say who shared the information. Was he
actually worried I'd be angry at one of the MCT detectives for leaking
information to him? If the gap between cops and DAs seemed that wide
to him, maybe he was in a place I would never truly understand. As it
stood, I realized I knew little about Chuck Forbes the detective.
Perhaps I had been too quick to assume that his hands were squeaky
clean.
I turned on the TV to catch my favorite talking-head show, Hardball. I
still don't know how a guy who looks like a fifty year-old surfer dude
had the balls to think he'd get away with a motto like 'Let's play
hardball,' but Chris Matthews seems to have pulled it off. Maybe if
Griffith fired me, I could get Matthews to hire me as a talking head.
It would be an easy job, and it seemed like an inevitable stop on the
road for anyone at the middle of a media frenzy. Yes, the congressmen
did it. So did the missing kids' parents. So did that guy who used to
play a detective with a bird on TV. They pretty much always did it.
Chuck and I didn't say much during the show. The silence was
